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You don't expect to see an injured elephant in the fields

There's an elephant in the room.


We talk of counting butterflies and monitoring dormice. We talk of preserving habitat and clearing out invasives. We do these things in little pockets of land that are tended with love and rigorous attention.


And yet, the fossil fuel burning continues. The pollution of the air and the sea and the soil. The fertilizers and herbicides, the fungicides and insecticides are still being spread and sprayed. The roads get built and the habitat is fragmented. The elephant we don't talk about is being injured every second of every day.


Even so, I rejoice to see the swan on her nest and her mate close by.

I rejoiced to hear the skylarks and linnets, the tits (great and blue), the robins, blackbirds, crows and woodpecker, the goldfinches and the blackcaps and more (thanks, Merlin app).


I rejoiced to see a hare gallop up the long field, pause, watch and gallop again to be profiled on the summit.


I rejoiced to hear the creaking internal sound of the trees by the stream and see their leaves unfold - though the bark is bitten off in places, still they survive.


Oh how is this possible? That we fiddle as the world burns?


How is this possible that we we prioritise our progress over the decline of everything else?


How is this that all this life has to be proven to matter? It cannot just have value because it is and it lives and it yearns, with its being, to live some more?


How can all life but us be deemed expendable? When all life but us contributes to Life itself?


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